Ontario proposes fast-tracking drug consumption site bill, skipping public hearings

The Ontario government is proposing to push through a bill that would close 10 supervised consumption sites without holding any public hearings, a move advocates and opposition critics say is anti-democratic.

The legislation seeks to prohibit and close any drug consumption sites that are within 200 metres of a school or daycare, and effectively prohibit any new sites from opening.

In their place, the government is launching 19 new "homelessness and addiction recovery treatment hubs" plus 375 highly supportive housing units at a planned cost of $378 million.

Government house leader Steve Clark has put forward a motion that would see the bill go straight from second reading to third reading, bypassing the committee stage that normally includes public hearings and consideration of amendments.

Health Minister Sylvia Jones made the consumption site announcement back in August, and now the government needs to get the bill through, Clark said.

"I sat here a couple of weeks ago and told you that I'd be using time allocation on some of the government's bills," Clark said after question period. "This is a government bill we need to get passed."

The bill is one of a number of pieces of legislation the government is fast-tracking, which is fuelling speculation of a provincial election earlier than the set June 2026 date.

In addition to limiting debate time in the legislature on the bills, the government has for some of them either curtailed or entirely skipped the committee stage, in which organizations and members of the public speak about how a bill will affect them. A divisive bill that would prohibit and remove certain bike lanes had one day of public hearings.

Lorraine Lam, an outreach worker in downtown Toronto, said Premier Doug Ford appears to be basing his government's consumption-site legislation purely on the opinions of the sites' opponents.

"I think it says a lot that he's not willing to hear the public opinions about what this decision is going to mean for so many people," she said.

"I think if he did open this up for public hearings ... the pushback would be huge."

Ford has often talked about hearing from people who are concerned about needles and drug use in communities near supervised consumption sites, particularly those near schools or daycares.

Lam said Ford's framing of the issue as moving from supervised consumption to a rehabilitation focus is a "false binary," saying those services can exist alongside consumption sites that save drug users' lives.